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The Evolution of Japanese Colonialism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Hyman Kublin
Affiliation:
Brooklyn College

Extract

Reflecting upon the career in the colonial government of Formosa that was to win him world-wide fame in the early twentieth century, Baron Shimpei Goto once remarked that “Japan had made no preparations whatever for the administration of the island at the time of its acquisition”. Underscoring this neglect, he added, was “the fact that, in the case of other nations confronted by a similar occasion, elaborate schemes are generally formulated to meet contingencies connected with the occupation of a new territory”. One may wonder whether the Baron included among the “elaborate schemers” the “absent-minded” builders of the British Empire.

It does not matter whether Baron Goto was aware of the complex historical processes, of the actions and accidents, involved in the creation of great empires. It is not even important whether he really believed that the colonial programs of the imperial powers were, like the war plans carefully devised by army general staffs, drawn from secret files as occasions demanded. Goto was primarily interested in the formulation and implementation of a colonial policy for Japan. His observation on his government's lack of preparedness to assume control and direction of Formosan affairs should thus be taken not simply as a confession and condemnation but rather as a statement of purpose.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1959

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References

1 Goto, Shimpei, “The administration of Formosa (Taiwan)“, in Shigenobu Okuma (compiler), Fifty years of new Japan, 2 vols. (London, 1909), II, 530.Google Scholar

2 For suggestive and imaginative comments upon this problem see Sir Sansom, George, Japan in world history (New York, 1951)Google Scholar, passim.

3 The nature and scope of Japanese expansionism under Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the so-called “Napoleon of Japan”, have been well treated in the master's dissertation of John Lane. For a summary see Lane, John (ed.), Columbia University East Asian Institute Studies no. 4; researches on the social sciences on Japan (New York, 1957), 6062.Google Scholar Hideyoshi's onslaught against Korea in the late sixteenth century has recently been studied in Giuliana Stramigioli, Hideyoshi's expansionist policy on the Asiatic mainland”, Asiatic Society of Japan, Transactions, 3rd series, III (12, 1954), 74116.Google Scholar

4 The background of the seclusion policy is succinctly presented in Charles Boxer, R., “Closing of Japan, 1636”1639”, History Today, VI, no. 12 (12, 1956), 830–39.Google Scholar For more extended treatment see the same author's The Christian century in Japan, 1549–1650 (Berkeley, 1951), 362 ff.Google Scholar, and Sir Sansom, George, The western world and Japan (New York, 1950), 167180.Google Scholar

5 Voyages to the south of Japan are dealt with in Kublin, Hyman, “The discovery of the Bonin Islands: a reexamination”, Association of American Geographers, Annals, XLIII, no. 1 (03, 1953), 2746.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a daring expedition to the north see Rinso, Mamiya, “Kita Yezo zusetsu or a description of the island of northern Yezo” (translated and annotated by Harrison, John A.), American Philosophical Society, Proceedings, XCIX (04 15, 1955), 93117.Google Scholar

6 On the northern trade see Harrison, John A., “The Saghalien trade; a contribution to Ainu studies”, Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, X, no. 3 (Autumn, 1954), 278293.CrossRefGoogle ScholarThe intellectual challenge to isolation is discussed in Donald Keene, The Japanese Discovery of Europe; Honda Toshiaki and other discoverers, 1720–1798 (New York, 1954), especially 142152 and 170–178.Google Scholar

7 The functioning of the Tokugawa regime is admirably limned in Hall, John W., Tanuma Okitsugu, 1719–1788, forerunner of modern Japan (Cambridge, Mass., 1955), especially chs. 1–2.Google Scholar

8 Wilson, Robert A., Genesis of the Meiji government in Japan, 1868–1871 (Berkeley, 1957), 5.Google Scholar See also the view of Beckmann, George, The making of the Meiji constitution (Lawrence, Kansas, 1957), especially 13.Google Scholar

9 The struggle over foreign policy in the closing years of the Tokugawa Shogunate is brilliantly analyzed in the lengthy “Introduction” of Beasley, William G., Select documents on Japanese foreign policy, 1853–1868 (London, 1955).Google Scholar

10 Conroy, Hilary, The Japanese frontier in Hawaii, 1868–1898 (Berkeley, 1953)Google Scholar, passim.

11 Security considerations will also explain Japan's abortive attempt to purchase the island of Guam from Spain shortly after the Meiji Restoration. The particulars are set forth in Shimomura Fujio . Meiji ishin no gaikō (The foreign relations of the Meiji restoration) (Tokyo, 1948), 291294.Google Scholar

12 The Japanese expressions kaitaku () and shokumin () may both be translated as “colonization”. The former term has, however, the connotation of “reclamation” or “development”, while the latter implies settlement of an alien territory. In speaking of their activities in the Bonins, Okinawa, and Hokkaido the Japanese customarily used the term kaitaku.

13 The Bonin Islands were to be incorporated into Tokyo-fu, or the government of Metropolitan Tokyo. During the Meiji period (1868–1912) Hokkaido was to be administered by several different types of government, finally being established as a cho (), or territory. Okinawa alone quickly attained prefectural status.

14 For an eye-witness account of the Japanese annexation of the Bonin Islands in 1875 see Robertson, Russell, “The Bonin Islands”, Asiatic Society of Japan, Transactions, 1st series.IV (1876), 111142Google Scholar, The Japanese claim to Okinawa is justified in Lanman, Charles, “The islands of Okinawa”, International Review, VII (1880), 1827.Google Scholar

15 A early attempt to encourage settlement in the Bonins is discussed in Kublin, Hyman, “The Ogasawara venture, 1861–1863”, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, XIV (06, 1951), 261284.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Life and conditions in Okinawa during the period of Japanese annexation are described in Brunton, R. H., “Notes taken during a visit to Okinawa Shima – Loochoo Islands", Asiatic Society of Japan, Transactions, IV (1876), 6677.Google Scholar

16 United States Civil Administration of the Ryukyu Islands, The Ryukyu Islands; prewar and postwar (through 30 June 1957) (Naha, Okinawa, 1957?), 6. See also Lebra, William P., “Culture change in rural Okinawa”, Pacific Science Board, National Research Council, Scientific investigations in the Ryukyu Islands (SIRI) 1951; post-war Okinawa (Washington, 1955), 178.Google Scholar

17 Harrison, John A., Japan's northern frontier (Gainesville, 1953), 64.Google Scholar

18 Harrison, John A., “The Capron mission and the colonization of Hokkaido, 1868–1875”, Agricultural History, XXV (07, 1951), 135-142.Google Scholar

19 See the appraisals by Harrison, John A., Japan's northern frontier, 140142Google Scholar, and Shosuke Sato, “Hokkaido and its progress in fifty years”, in Shigenobu Okuma (compiler), op. cit., II, 513–529.

20 Japan's principal experience with Formosa before the Sino-Japanese War was the dispatch of a punitive expedition against the local head-hunting aborigines in 1874. The episode is studied in Kublin, Hyman, “The ‘modern’ army of early Meiji Japan”, Far Eastern Quarterly, IX, no. 1 (11, 1949), 3536.Google Scholar For an advice to the Japanese government on the strategic position of Formosa see Presseisen, Ernst L., “Roots of Japanese imperialism; a memorandum of General Legendre”, Journal of Modern History, XXIX, no. 2 (06, 1957), 108111.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21 “We acquired Formosa in 1895 after the war with China”, said Inazo Nitobe, “largely because we could not get anything else.” And, he added, “the island was for a while a white elephant to Japan, and its sale was even discussed at one time.” Nitobe, Inazo, “Japanese colonization”, Asiatic Review, XVI, no. 45 (01, 1920), 115.Google Scholar See also Barclay, George W., Colonial development and population in Taiwan (Princeton, 1954), 7.Google Scholar

22 The establishment of a firm and efficient colonial administration in Formosa occurred during the office of the fourth Governor-General, Lieut.-General Viscount Kodama, much of whose fame as a colonial administrator was derived from his able and brilliant Chief of Civil Administration, Baron Shimpei Goto. “In Baron Kodama and Dr. (now Baron) Goto”, said the scholar Seiji Hishida, “Japan has produced colonial administrators worthy to be placed in the same class as Lord Cromer and Cecil Rhodes.” Hishida, Seiji, “Formosa: Japan's first colony”, Political Science Quarterly, XXII, no. 2 (06, 1907), 268.Google Scholar

23 “The extension of the police force”, General Count Katsura, second Governor-General, recalled, “was an object of paramount importance in the government of Formosa. So also was the implanting in the minds of the people a high regard for the virtues of His Majesty the Emperor, as well as to secure a thorough appreciation by them of the goodwill and sincerity of our Government, and this could not better be attained than by extending the administrative police force of the island.” General Count Katsura, “Formosa; the early administration”, in Stead, Alfred (ed.), Japan by the Japanese (New York, 1904), 582.Google Scholar

24 Formosa, said Baron Goto, “has come into more intimate relations with the economic world of Japan Proper, to which it is now bound by ties as close as those of mother and child.” Okuma, op. cit., II, 547.

25 Goto, Baron Shimpei, “Formosa under Japanese administration”, Independent, LIV (07 3, 1902), 1589Google Scholar, is a typical example.

26 Quoted in Takekoshi, Yosaburo, Japanese rule in Formosa (New York, 1907), 11.Google Scholar

27 “During my stay in Taihoku [capital of Formosa]”, Takekoshi wrote, “I often went to Baron Goto's official residence and was astonished at the splendid collection of books there. These were arranged on shelves built on both sides of the corridors, both upstairs and down. Afterwards I was told by the Baron that the greater part of this collection belonged to the Governor-General's office, and he added, ‘You know we look upon the Governor-General's office as a sort of university where we may study the theories and principles of colonization, in which branch of knowledge we, Japanese, are not over-well-posted. The Governor-General is the president, I am the manager, and this room we are now in is the library of this Colonization University.’” Ibid., 21–22.

Closely associated with Baron Goto, a medical doctor by training and with experience in public health administration, was Dr. Inazo Nitobe. Though he was widely known to Americans for many years, through his voluminous writings and numerous lectures, as an interpreter of Japanese history and culture to the west, Nitobe was primarily an agricultural economist with extensive experience in the development of Hokkaido. Before assuming his post as head of the Industrial Bureau of Formosa, he toured Southeast Asia and Australia, studying tropical agriculture. From his observations he developed the famous Taiwan Sugar Policy, the introduction of which was to transform the economy of the island and establish its firm economic base. Kitasawa, Sukeo, The Life of Dr. Nitobe (Tokyo, 1953), 4547.Google Scholar

28 These designations are used respectively in: Japan as a colonizing power”, Spectator, XCVIII (03 23, 1907), 447448Google Scholar; and Kerr, George H., “Formosa - colonial laboratory”, Far Eastern Survey, XI, no. 4 (02 23, 1942), 5055.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29 See especially Conroy, Hilary, “Chosen mondai: the Korean problem in Meiji Japan”, American Philosophical Society, Proceedings, C, no. 5 (10, 1956), 443454.Google Scholar

30 The literature dealing with the imposition of Japanese control over Korea is fairly extensive. An excellent account will be found in the chapter, “ I will whip you with scorpions”, in McKenzie, F. A., Korea's fight for freedom (New York, 1920).Google Scholar

31 The depth of Korean bitterness was to be revealed when negotiations were conducted with Japan in 1953 for the settlement of many outstanding problems. When the Japanese representative, Kubota, stated that Korea had benefited from Japanese rule, the government of President Syngman Rhee broke off discussions and for several years thereafter refused to resume talks until the objectionable statement had been withdrawn. Shin, Ki Suk, “Perspectives of Korea-Japan conference”, Chungang Herald, II, no. 2 (04, 1958), 3.Google Scholar

32 Japanese and Korean views of the colonial record are studied in Kublin, Hyman, “Korea and Japan: neighbor's keepers?”, United States Naval Institute Proceedings, LXXXI (10, 1955), 10841091.Google Scholar

33 During the period of Japanese rule it was rather Koreans who emigrated to Japan in the tens and hundreds of thousands. By and large they were employed as cheap, unskilled laborers. The pioneer study by Wagner, Edward W., The Korean minority in Japan, 1904–1950 (New York, 1951)Google Scholar, is useful for the entire problem.